I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). Monday started off just weird. Our ERP social worker Ms. Grey had us all assemble in our former group room which doubles as the rec room. There she informed us we need to be patient while awaiting our release paperwork to be processed and to stop having people on the outside contact the clerks for the judges involved. The problem is none of us have any faith in her or the process involved. It doesn’t help that the perception of Ms. Grey’s attitude has been one that seems to enjoy seeing the people in our group twist in the wind as they wait and not forthcoming with information. As for me, I was fortunate enough not to be involved with Milwaukee County and that my parole officer (PO) had already faxed my C15 form authorizing my release for Wednesday. I thought I was done with Ms. Grey, not quite. I was called to come see her in the dayroom from my cell. She wanted to know how I was getting transported from the bus station and if the PO had approved my plans. Of course, this had been done months ago. Then I was called down again because she had lost the Socrates assessment I had done way back at the beginning of this ERP group. She gave me a new one to fill out. At 1 pm she returned to collect it. I had thought about it and decided to ask if there was some sort of problem with my release plan. She said no. She then asked me if I was the group member that drank Everclear. I replied no I wasn’t. I was the guy who liked to drink alone at night. She nodded and went away. I’m sure she’s trying to write my case summary for my PO, Helen Gaither and her memory has failed her again. I thought social workers would keep notes on such things. But my problems are nothing compared to what 3 of my fellow ERP group members are dealing with. Cellie Larry Sands has somehow had his release paperwork get lost between when records sent it the Thursday before our graduation from ERP. Scott Bunker has had his release paperwork get put on the wrong desk because his judge had retired. John Lloyd has had his judge involved in a murder trial so nothing was getting done. Interestingly enough Lloyd and Bunker are Waukesha County cases. But neither Bunker or Sands find out what is happening without the assistance of the sister of ERP group member Scott Dietz who is kind enough to follow up on their cases with phone calls and inquiries. Lloyd had his girlfriend following up for him or he wouldn’t have found out. They were fortunate to not have heeded Ms. Grey’s acclamation this morning. The rest of the guys have no had their release paperwork signed. Now they are just waiting their PO to release them. One, Augie Prescott is getting released tomorrow (Tues, June 21st), his PO having been quick with the turn around. Bunker did get some good news. That ear plug that had gotten stuck worked itself out after fluid build up and pushed it out enough to where he could get it. He still can’t hear as he feels like he’s underwater but hopefully he’ll be ok now. I just watched TV that night. I had figured today to be my release date almost since I got here. But I’m not complaining, I’m grateful. I could be going through what Sands, Bunker, or Lloyd are going through. It really is almost over.

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). Monday, June 6th would turn out to be a record breaking day heat wise in the Milwaukee area. Though we are in an environment where we never see the outside world, we very much feel the effects as the air from the outside world is pumped through the ventilation system. But the day didn’t begin all that badly. Our ERP social worker Ms. Grey returned from vacation having gotten to see the Grand Canyon among other places. She appeared relaxed, content much more than I’d seen her in the past. The first thing we did was to go through the relapse trigger assignment. Ms. Grey surprised us with having the presenting inmate do a skit with other group members reflecting the relapse triggers described. For mine, she had two inmates play my adoptive parents, Charles and Victoria Martin expressing concern about how much isolating and the amount of time I spent on a computer, which I could actually see them doing. As an IT Infrastructure and .NET Framework programmer, fortunately they know I will be working on the computer a lot, knocking the rust off my skills. While all this was going on I saw guard Ron Kidd standing at the front door of my cell. Sure enough he had gone in and was doing a cell inspection. We had largely been ignored since the big shakedown here but Kidd and cellie Malcolm Johnson have already had several run ins. He hasn’t gotten the idea yet to stay below the radar which is surprising since he has spent so much time in prison. Cellie and ERP group member Larry Sands happened to be there and said he saw Kidd go straight to the fan he managed to acquire from a departing inmate (again) and take it which led him to think someone snitched on him, possibly Johnson. While Johnson has become one who seems to spend a lot of time at the guard desk and time alone with his ERP social worker Ms. Carr, I don’t think Johnsons was the snitch this time. The bottom line is he took a fan, an extra set of clothes I had and ripped down everything taped to the wall including our antennas for TV. Reception can be hard here so that was annoying. But back to group. I participated in the skit for ERP group member Russ Johnson. I played his twelve year old daughter, while Sands played his ex-wife, who were making demand if him. Apparently, I did a good job playing his daughter. At one point in the skit, mom and dad were fighting and I quipped, “Mom and dad are fighting again. Oh Well. More presents for me.” Everyone laughed at this. Then we got into the Phase 3 essay test while she reviewed our Plan A and B plan. It was a simple test. Afterwards, she made suggestions on how to improve the poster and covered the definition of craving that she hadn’t covered yet but had been on the test. By now, the heat, a high of 94 degrees outside and high humidity, had descended on us. In these polyester uniforms it was just miserable. And Sands, as well as Jose Michaels, have no fans. I felt bad for them but nothing I could do. Speaking of Michaels, he really is working hard. He is thoroughly doing the exercises in the Houses of Healing book by Robin Casarjian. Just a ton of effort in everything program related. Malcolm, on the other hand, has made it clear he doesn’t want to do anything. It’s kind of interesting to watch. After group, some members called me over. They want me to create a title for the poster board on the graduation project on the computer. Of course, I wasn’t happy. Just poor planning on this all around. Other groups had their project done months before and here we are 4 days before graduation still planning. But Russell Johnson volunteered to step up and make it. I was happy. Perhaps too, the heat is just making me cranky. Mail call came and along with it, another development with my daughter, Lexi. She had gone on Facebook and gave me a friend request (Under my real name of course. If you’d like to befriend Jake on Facebook, go here). I asked the blog sponsor who watches these things for me to accept her request and let her know I can’t wait to see her and to look around her Facebook page for me and let me know what’s going on with her. Finally, a window into what is going on! I settled in for the night with a smile in spite of sweating along with some apprehension.

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). It’s the first Wednesday of the month which means it’s a training day. What this means for us is it’s a cleaning day on the pod and there are no ERP group sessions. We’d been told by our ERP Social Worker Ms. Grey that this would be a different kind of cleaning day in that it would be a more extensive cleaning than we’d been accustomed but that didn’t appear to be the case. I never enjoy days like this but mostly because of my own personality I dislike chaos and disorganization, and while the process to get the cleanup done fits that description, the work does get done. It was a little different for me this time being a swamper. At the end of the cleanup, fellow swamper David Sussex and I had to move all the tables and chairs out of the dayroom, turning the tables on the side to clean out hidden treasures from underneath in the rail of the table such as butter and ketchup packets, stored there by inmates so they can have extras at a meal of their choice. To be honest, its an unpleasant task as often the packets have been crushed and are messy. After this was done, we mop the entire floor and sweep. We still get in each others way but it’s a work in progress that will get solved as we get familiar with the job and each other. Once we were done we had to move the tables back to where they were. The former swamper that is working with cellie Brian Whalen to go back into the business of dealing drugs decided to direct Sussex and I where to put the tables. That was fine until he decided he was going to have fun with it. I have little tolerance for the former swamper to begin with much less any desire to fool around while working. I’m kind of the type to get focused on a task. So, I walked away when Sussex continued to play with him. Someone came over and helped Sussex. He’d tell me later he was just wanting to goof around. I suppose I get it. They’re both about 10 years younger than me and the way they work is different than mine. And lets face it, it’s not like the fate of the free world rests on my performance so I could lighten up. Once done, we returned to our cells for the day supposedly to work on ERP program materials. That was no problem for cellie Larry Sands and I as we had a ton of stuff to do. By Friday we had to have our Phase III Goals and Objectives done, the Living With Others Workbook done – all 61 pages and we’re supposed to be working on our legacy project for the graduation. I managed to finish the workbook but not doing a very thorough job in the process. I wrote up my Phase III goals as improving social skills and working on patience. Because the goals are to be presented by Friday May 13th, I chose the Bible as my basis for study on patience, as there’s no time to find and read a book of any value on the subject and to write an essay on it. For improving social skills, I’m writing an essay on the positives and negative things I’ve learned about myself working as the swamper. Just a lot of time constraints. At lunch and supper, Sussex continues to have real problems counting trays. But more importantly, we had another guard who rarely works on our unit. He let me know right away there would be no extra food given to swampers when he works. I was fine with that as I rarely eat the extra stuff anyway. But it told me this wasn’t going to go well. At 6 pm after supper he wouldn’t let us come out of our rooms as every other floor is locked down on training day. But he didn’t know the program floors like ours were exempted. So 7 to 8 inmates were down at his desk arguing the point with him. Finally a white shirt (supervisor) let him now. But by the time cleanup began, barely anyone was in the dayroom which was funny considering all the fuss that was made. It came time to take out the trash. I asked the guard to open the door but he ignored me for 10 minutes, while chatting with another guard. I just left it and went to go get ready for 9:15 am count. Yes, I still need to work on patience? After count, I read emails you all send to the sponsors for me. One reader, who has corresponded in the past, compared reading this blog to an episode of Real Housewives. I get that! But more importantly, it gave me a real good laugh prior to going to sleep. So thank you!

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). On Wednesday we don’t have ERP groups scheduled so we sat in our cells or dayroom. Nothing much happened until that night. ERP group member Scott Bunker had a problem come up that could be painful. He hadn’t been able to go to the bathroom and the little bit he could was bloody. He finally went up and told the guard on duty. The guard wasn’t exactly the model of compassion as he had him take a urine sample cup and scoop out the bloody water out of the toilet to send to the Heath Services Unit (HSU). But Bunker was told to submit a blue medical request to be seen which he did. Apparently that night he was up several times as he was in a huge amount of pain, his privates were swelling and though he felt like he had to go, he couldn’t. I got up for my shower at 5 am as usual. As I walked to the shower I heard the third shift guard tell Bunker to come to the desk. After I got out of the shower and had put my laundry in the washer, I saw the swampers by the bathroom wearing gloves and mopping the floor. There was blood all over. At Bunker’s cell the other guard had gone in with a yellow bag and gloves emerging with it full of items that had been bloodied. I would have thought swampers and guards would have had more protection than gloves. The guards offered to send him to the hospital but he declined. I urged him to reconsider. Bleeding like this just doesn’t heal itself. At least now though HSU would see him right away Thursday morning. That morning for our group ERP group leader Ms. Grey showed us videos on methamphetamine abuse. The first was Living In Shadows The Innocent Victims of Meth and The Meth Epidemic produced by PBS. Both were quite good. But Ms. Grey was clearly in a bad mood. During the time after the videos we had left over before lunch she went off on people for not understanding how to develop goals and objectives for Phase II based on SMART. At one point she asked me to assist ERP group members Kevin House and Mark Hogan develop theirs. But then Larry Sands spoke up complaining that she approves our goals and then changes her mind. She went off on Sands, telling him not to put that on her and how he always has something to say whenever he’s criticized. The problem is Sands is right. She has given conflicting signals to people including me. But that wasn’t the real issue. She had obviously been talked to by somebody who had gotten involved as a result of Sands complaints to others. The tension between the two is intense which made us uncomfortable but there’s been a lot of that lately so its kind of becoming normal. After lunch we watched another good video Methamphetamine and Drug Endangered Children. Bunker returned to group during this time with HSU having prescribed antibiotics. They also reduced the huge amounts of ibuprofen he had been prescribed for his back since as a rule they won’t give out painkillers to inmates if at all possible. As the night progressed his problem again began to reappear. I am worried for him. Tomorrow is another Graduation Day for another ERP group. I’m looking forward to seeing something good happen here.

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). Wednesday was another training day here but it was also schedule not to be a group day so there was a lot of time to spend in our cells. Cellie Andre Charles was obviously anxious to get out and we all, as I’d find out later, were anxious for him to leave. At 9 am we set out to clean our cells but Andre was worried about getting dirty so he didn’t do anything. He went down to the guard desk to ask when he would get called. It was a different guard on duty, one who had no patience for antics like guard Roscoe Peters did. He didn’t get an answer. About 9:15 am, that guard came up to our cell and gave him a bus pass for the bus service in Milwaukee which got him even more geeked. He put his head out the door and he could overhear the guards discussing him and laughing wondering why he was in such a hurry to get out because its not like “he’s got a job to go to” This just infuriated him because of the disrespect he felt. Like yesterday, I can’t blame him. It was truly unprofessional on their part. Finally at 10:17 am, the call came. He wrapped all his state owned property in a bed sheet and cellies Brian Whalen and Corey Ball took his boxes down for him. He had to sit in the dayroom for a few minutes but then he was gone. Within minutes of his departure Whalen began bending my ear about how Andre would steal from him too and how he had abused his generous nature during their time here. I knew this already. But I asked why he didn’t do something about it. He replied he was just trying to keep the peace. I knew that too and I understand it. But the feeling in our cell at this point was like a huge burden having been lifted off of a person, like one could breathe again. While all the Andre bashing was going on the thought occurred to me whoever my cellies are then will probably knock me after I leave too. We already had lined up the occupant for what had been Andre’s bunk. It was my ERP group member Larry Sands. We had to wait till guard Ruth Bartkowski came on 2nd shift to do the transfer as she is the only guard who will do them. Our motive is to make sure we don’t get someone who isn’t like us when the new inmates come in – quiet and able to get along. Now that Andre is gone, Ball got a hold of the unit typewriter and typed letters in our cell. Andre had thrown a fit with him about the noise. All of us took the locks off our lockers. After count, Sands moved in. The first night was spent mostly with him getting to know Whalen and Ball while he regaled them with tales of his sexual conquests. He loves it here as everyone is so quiet. Apparently the cell he came from, apparently liked to grab each other and wrestle in a pseudo sexual manner. He couldn’t cope with that or the noise. I don’t blame him! That night I relaxed for the first time in a long time and everyone seemed pleased with Sands addition to our cell.

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). Tuesday afternoon came about and the staff and inmates alike were focused on one thing – Gov. Walker was giving his address on the state budget. Inmates and staff were watching for vastly different reasons however. Staff were concerned with layoffs, benefit cuts, as well as DOC funding cuts. Inmates wanted to find out what would happen to the so called early release provisions of Act 28 in the previous two year budget and what, if anything, would happen to ERP or the Challenge Incarceration Program (CIP). ERP is a federally funded program but those running the DOC are said to be opposed to any kind of programs that encourage early inmate release. So nobody knows what was going to happen. Truthfully, though, had people been thinking by the time any of this goes into effect we will have all graduated ERP. So there really isn’t reason to be concerned. But it makes a good conversational piece. The social workers even came by the unit though no groups were going to watch it on our TV. The address got interrupted by the trays being handed out for supper but the news came out under this proposal, Act 28 and any mechanism for early release, such as good time, is dead. In addition, over 50 million in funding for the DOC is being cut based on lower prisoner population. It would seem these two things contradict each other. We shall see. Nothing was said specifically about ERP but I’m guessing it’s going to be left alone. Again, we shall see. The rest of the budget was painful to hear but that didn’t surprise me. I noted the possible cuts to BadgerCare, especially since I might need help with the cost of the PET scans after I get out until I get a job with insurance to make sure cancer has not returned. But that’s a down the road concern. We all went about our business. The following day held a surprise for me. It was a Training Day but I was asked along with a swamper to go and clean the social worker’s office. I got there and they were al in one room with several desks. Even the intern Nikita was there. They joked with me about the job sweeping I was doing when I left a dust bunny behind. It was odd seeing them all together except for one. Then the unit manager came by, let the social workers know she needed her office cleaned as well and wanting the mop water changed. The swamper went to get water while I went to her office to sweep. I’ve never seen a more messy desk. Having read my face she insisted she knew where everything was on it. After we were done we returned to the unit where everyone was busy cleaning as is the custom on Training Day. The guys in my group now kid me more than ever about being Ms. Grey’s favorite. But that’s ok. I don’t’ care. I just don’t know what she sees in me.

I’m at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), an institution in the Wisconsin Prison System (WPS), participating in the Earned Release Program (ERP). This morning cellie Andre Charles and Malik Pearl immediately started in on each other once Malik revealed people talk about Andre’s tendency to snap on people. Andre didn’t like learning people talked about him though he says he knew they did. But of course, he was angry that Malik didn’t tell him before. That’s not what he was really mad about. But as I talked with him I again tried to make him understand that his rage issue, if he didn’t get a hold of it, with medication or whatever, he’s going to kill someone to no avail. He keeps wanting my opinion/approval, I don’t know why. But I’m going to keep telling him the same thing. After the ERP group began this morning, Ms. Grey, who’d been on vacation all last week, was here. She asked us our impression of the What the Bleep Do We Know. We were all pretty skeptical. Then we did breathing exercises which she wants us to do everyday to start group. We close one nostril, breathe in, bend our head, then blow out the other nostril. It’s different. But we better get used to it. Then we talked about the assignments in “Criminal Conduct and Substance Abuse Treatment” by Kenneth Wanberg and Harvey Milkman and Houses of Healing by Robin Casarjian. Everyone completely agreed including Ms. Grey, that the Milkman workbook completely sucks and Casarjian rocks. But we’re required somehow to do this workbook according to Ms. Grey. So that’s what we’ll do. In the afternoon session we managed to get a hold of the remote for the DVD player and were able to watch “Portraits in Addiction” by Bill Moyer, which we hadn’t been able to do last time and wrote a one page essay on it. It was at least 15 years old so some of the references and people were dated but I thought it showed several types of addiction as well. They’re telling us much of what we already know. Yes we are alcoholics. We don’t need convincing. But perhaps I speak too quickly. After the afternoon session, I checked at the desk for mail and to my shock there was a letter from my former step-daughter Lynn. She sent a Christmas card with a photo of her and her boyfriend, a photo of her and JoAnn, and Lisa and a letter. In her letter she apologized for how she has treated me and seemed genuinely interested in what was going on with me. They had even gone to see my adoptive parents this past weekend. I sense there’s more going on out there in regards to this group of people. But its the same issue when JoAnn sent me the Christmas card. To what level can I get involved with these folks? Should I? I still haven’t decided. But I have a letter to write. I’m excited she reached out to me as I had wanted that for a long time.